The cash has started pouring in for THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Warners/MGM).  In 3100 theatres, the film earned $13M in midnight screenings last night.  That was considerably higher than the $8M earned by the midnights for Return of the King, but King was in2003, before the phenomenon of midnight releases had really taken hold […]

> The Hollywood Reporter has fresher boxoffice numbers.  MONEYBALL’s start isn’t quite as high as it had looked, but a Friday close to $7M is still excellent, and should lead to a $20M or so weekend, especially since exit polls indicate audiences are in line with critics on this one.  THE LION KING, entering what’s […]

  OPENINGS:  This was supposed to be the kick-off weekend for the holiday movie season, but Dune 2 decamped for 2024 and the studios didn’t step in to replace it, so the biggest arrival of the week was the expansion of PRISCILLA (A24) from 4 theaters to 1359 with $5.1M.  That’s not a bad number […]

Updated international box office chart:

>The Hollywood Reporter has preliminary Friday numbers, and while the day’s boxoffice is looking like a close finish between GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE (Sony) and THE VOW (Screen Gems/Sony), with both at $7-7.5M for the day, the likelihood is that over the course of the weekend–considering that new openings are more frontloaded (especially genre […]

Paranormal Activity 4 opened this weekend with $27 million overseas from 33 markets, on its way to an estimated $110 million total overseas and a weak $67 million total domestic (according to ShowbuzzDaily projections).  That would give PA4 a worldwide total of $177 million, tied with PA2 as the lowest in the still-very-profitable franchise. The biggest gainer overseas this […]

>The weekend studio estimates (based on Friday and Saturday actuals and projections for Sunday) are coming in significantly stronger than the weekend numbers posted yesterday (based on Friday actuals only).  The box office volume for the top 12 films is now looking like a soft $206 million for the weekend, up 89% from last year’s […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 is now -19% below last year’s comparable span (1 point worse than last week) and still -16% below the average for this point the past four years ($2.752 billion).  Over the same […]